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Updated: June 8, 2025
"Would you believe your eyes, young sceptic?" "I might even doubt my own eyes." "Wherefore would you?" "Nothing is more deceptive than sight; optical delusions are common. Did you see a witch?" "Not myself; but others did." "Who?" "John, Tituba and Ann Parris saw the witches dancing on the ceiling, with their feet up and their heads down."
It is an instructive fact, as illustrating the retributive dealings of Providence, that the direst affliction of the Massachusetts Colony the witchcraft terror of 1692 originated with the Indian Tituba, a slave in the family of the minister of Danvers.
"What should we do if a witch were to catch us, Tituba?" asked Abigail Williams, the niece of Mr. Parris. "Dar but one thing to do, chile. Dat am to burn de witch or hang 'em." "Are there witches now?" "Yes, dar be plenty. I see 'em ob night. Doan ye nebber see a black man in de night?"
These examinations were continued for several days, each of the accused being brought at various times before the magistrates, who seem to have taken great interest in the absurd stories with which the "afflicted children" and Tituba regaled them.
Do you see that group of children and half- grown girls, and, among them, an old, hag-like Indian woman, Tituba by me? Those are the Afflicted Ones. Behold, at this very instant, a proof of Satan's power and malice!
A child can be made to believe it sees the most unnatural things, and in a few days Tituba and John had thoroughly convinced the children that they saw spirits and witches in the air all about them. One evening, a pretty young woman, not over twenty-one or two, came to the parsonage, where the witches and ghosts had been holding high revel. She was a brunette with a dark keen eye and hair of jet.
At the very bottom of the whole thing, perhaps, were the West Indian slaves "John Indias" and his wife Tituba, whom Master Parris had brought with him from Barbados. There were two children in the house, a little daughter of nine, named Elizabeth; and Abigail Williams, three years older.
It is not to be wondered at, that under these inflictions, at the end of two months, the invalid, Sarah Osburn, died. Tituba, however, lay in jail until, finally, at the expiration of a year and a month, she was sold in payment of her jail fees. One account saying that her owner, the Rev.
That important point being settled, the next followed of course, "Who has bewitched them?" The children being asked said, "Tituba." Satan's Especial Grudge against Our Puritan Fathers. "Tituba!" And who else? Why need there have been anybody else? Why could not the whole thing have stopped just there? No doubt Tituba was guilty, if any one was.
"Can we catch witches?" Abigail asked Tituba. "Yes." "How?" "Many ways." Then she proceeded to tell of the various charms by which a witch might be detected, such as drawing the picture of the person accused and stabbing it with a knife of silver, or shooting it with a silver bullet.
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